Faces of 2007

Authorities had offered a reward of 500,000 kyat (nearly US $400) for his arrest.

Women activists play a large role in public demonstrations

Aware of the deterioration in the country’s socioeconomic situation, an independent politician, Amyotheryei Win Naing, 70, along with several friends, began distributing rice to poor communities in South Dagon, Rangoon. He was arrested on September 25 after offering food to monks before they set out to march. He spent one month in detention.

Celebrities

Comedian Zarganar

Popular personalities from Burma’s arts and entertainment scene added their support to September’s demonstrations, but the regime wasn’t amused. The comedian Zarganar, a former dentist whose stage name means “tweezers,” and the film actor Kyaw Thu were arrested after taking food and water to protesting monks at Rangoon’s landmark Shwedagon Pagoda.

The musician Ye Lwin was also arrested. A leading personality from the cultural scene, poet Aung Way, escaped to neighboring Thailand.

Another well-known comedian and a former movie star, Par Par Lay, leader of Mandalay’s “Moustache Brothers” comedy troupe, was arrested after presenting alms to monks at a local monastery. He spent one month in Mandalay’s Ohbo prison before being freed. Zarganar, Kyaw Thu and Ye Lwin were also eventually released.

Comedian Par Par Lay

International celebrities also added their voices to a worldwide outburst of condemnation of the September crackdown.

Around 25 American stars of stage and screen put their names to an appeal for UN action on Burma. Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson, Susan Sarandon, Dustin Hoffman and other leading actors followed the lead of actor Jim Carrey, who posted a message on the video-sharing Web site YouTube urging people to join a global campaign on behalf of detained Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Media

Firsthand news, photographs and video footage of the September demonstrations reached the world’s media almost instantaneously thanks to the work of a new breed of journalist—the “citizen reporters.”

They, in turn, had state-of-the-art technology to thank for getting the news out of Burma so rapidly. Even many demonstrators joined in the task.

Without their efforts, the repressive Burmese regime would have been able to carry out their bloody handiwork with greater confidence that the atrocities could be largely hidden from the outside world, as happened in the 1988 uprising.

Two pioneers in this new form of journalism were blog sites, Moezack and Ko Htike blogs. They provided a wealth of photos and video clips to the international media, especially Al Jazeera, which has now become a favored source of news in Burmese households.

International media picked up many stories and images from The Irrawaddy and the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). DVB’s TV broadcasts, launched on May 28, 2005, can be received via satellite in Burma.

News of the events in Rangoon and elsewhere was also beamed back into Burma via the shortwave broadcasts of the BBC, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Voice of America (VOA). Their effectiveness was confirmed by the accolades handed out by an angry regime, which described the radios as “killers on the air waves,” and “saboteurs” who were “airing a skyful of lies.”

Reporting from Burma had a tragic side. Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai of the video agency APF News paid with his life.

In 1988, his death might have at first gone unnoticed.